I was thinking that it could be really helpful to have mod controlled flairs both on /r/feminism and /r/AskFeminists. This way we can in a way congratulate people who support the subreddit and have them stand out in the comments.

The first reason may be obvious but I want to state it anyway. In both subreddits there are a lot of questions all the time about common issues, such as the wage gap, patriarchy, gender roles, studies, etc. If we have flairs like 'sociology', 'psychology', or even 'feminist theorist' or 'patriarchy knowledge', people would respect their comments more and pay more attention to what they say, instead of asking the same questions all over again.

There is also a second issue that I think it's also really important for /r/AskFeminists. I'm not sure if the rule still stands, but there was a rule only 'feminists' could have top-level comments. If we had a flair for those users, it would be easier to see who is answering 'in the name of feminism' and who is just giving opinions on what they think feminists think. It would also be easier to control who can post top level comments.

It's also better for people asking questions, since sometimes trolls or people not related to feminism answer questions or posts as if they were feminists (or criticizing the movement as a whole), which many times leave the asker with more doubts and/or with disappointment in the subreddit. I've seen the disappointment from newcomers in a couple of posts in /r/feminism in less than two days, so I think it would be great to clarify who is a long time supporter of Femisnim and who is just passing by.

I believe there can be a lot more reasons why we should have flairs. I think they SHOULD be controlled by the mods (i.e., you have to ask the mods to set you a flair, and send proof if you are trying to represent a field of science for example). I'm not sure how this is done, but I've seen it in other subreddits so I believe it is totally possible.

Earlier this year, we implemented the flair system in one of our subreddits, however, that ended up deterring posting, in many cases, and created a lot of confusion about posting rights. We also had several cases of people gaming the system in order to gain flair and then later using it in trolling/disruptive activities.

We have concluded that neither self-selection nor mod assignment of flair can provide a net benefit in the context of our subreddit.

Was it mod assignment of flairs? How can people game the system if the mods are in control of the flairs? Also, isn't it easy to just ban people who game the system on purpose, and remove any comments where there was trolling or something of that sort?

Also, if you don't mind, I would like to hear more about that story. Was it in /r/feminism or /r/AskFeminists? How did it deter posting? I mean, it's only a graphical change, it's not like banning people without flair from posting. Why did it create confusion?

In /r/askfeminists the posting rights are pretty clear and would be even clearer if flairs were added. You could just ban or simply pm people who are trying to abuse the flair system, as lomegor suggested. Maybe it could be a post on here with people requesting certain flair that way we know where the decisions come from.